I, Dremer Kyburn, bear witness to this troubled spirit, and the sorrows and labours that have settled upon its future.

  Yet as this tale begins in the misty alleys of Dwinvale, I find myself curious of a few things and asking several questions:

  What is the nature of the soul? Is it something fashioned from experience? Or is it something bound intrinsically to the body, eternal and intransigent? If a man, or a woman, or a devil or an angel changes their form and therefore the way they experience the world, does that change their true nature? Or does the truth of the self claw its way to the surface of one’s being?

  And what of death and reincarnation? Is it akin to a slumber and reawakening, and the soul simply returns to its former state? Or is it as though the past life was a dream, and the new life is the awakening, only for it to be as a dream once more when its time is done? As though life, all existence, is a dream within a dream, forever unraveling itself?

  I know not the answer to these questions, and I believe that the man who has experienced these things time and time again has none himself.

  It may be that he will never know the truth, and if that is so, what hope do we have of understanding the threads that connect life, death and rebirth?

  One face has borne a thousand names and walked a thousand paths. Did his soul remain the same upon each journey? If he should die here and now and return reincarnated, would he continue as he was? Will he possess the same hopes, the same desires? Will he make the same decisions, the same mistakes?

  There are dreams that haunt him, dreams of footprints on a distant path, through a forest these eyes have never seen, through mist and shadows and the madness of strange and forgotten paths... to a temple rising above the treetops...

  His first memory was of waking up on a stone altar, two years before this particular moment, a black metal knife at his side, and a woman lying on the floor. At first, he thought that she had died, and he had killed her, but the scar in his chest- right above the heart, spoke to a different truth, and as he examined her, it seemed that she was only sleeping.

  He wondered if she had stirred in the time that he had been gone, or if she remained there still, slumbering.

  He knows that in this life, he has never seen this temple, has never set foot in that forest.

  And yet, for a creature without memory, this dream seems cruel, somehow.

  But I’m getting ahead of myself.

  Imagine, if you would, a fairly ordinary man. He is tall, slender muscular, with a thin face, a slightly hooked nose, coppery skin. His hair tumbles to his shoulders in messy black curls, and two scars mark his face, one below his left eye, the other on his right cheek, running down to his jaw.

  Imagine this man in piecemeal leather armour, beaten and worn from days of travel and bygone battles. A rust-red, half circle cloak partially obscures the hilt of a longsword at his side.

  In his left hand, he clutches an effigy of Valefor, the god of death.

  Picture these things and you shall have the image of one Soren Mallister.

  His eyes are a deep brown, almost black, and they might, under normal circumstances, be described as kind. Yet their fairly plain appearance belies his true nature. And it is in the eyes that the truth of him might be revealed. His is a blood ancient and nearly forgotten, a magic born of oblivion, a people bound in curses and long-lost glories.

  The word 'Daoine' is all but forgotten, its people scattered like dust to the winds.

  At this moment, as he stumbles in the darkness, a thousand thoughts now play through his mind, and, not for the first time, he wondered if his life would have been different if he had not been one of that ill-fated folk.

  He groaned. ‘Shit. This could have gone better,’ he muttered, wincing as he presses his hand to the wound, trying to staunch the blood.

  ‘True enough.’ The voice that drifted back to him was silky and feminine, and surprisingly well-spoken, even with those two little words. No ordinary street toughs, these.

  He made a show of stumbling away, trying to get out of the shadows into the lamplight of the filthy thoroughfares of the seedier portion of Dwinvale. The flagstone streets were empty, and a low-hanging mist clung to the ground. Strange shapes formed in them, sinuous form like silver serpents roiling and writhing in a massive grey carpet.

  The two figures followed, in no hurry to stop him, perhaps knowing that these townsfolk would never open their doors after nightfall. Crying out for help would be useless, and having it actually go unanswered would fill him with more despair than simply knowing they wouldn’t be.

  As he turned around to look at them, he muttered something under his breath, pressing his hand to the wound, masking the tell-tale glow of rejuvenating magic with his cloak.

  He looked at the woman as she sat on her haunches before him. She had a fair complexion and platinum hair. There was a faint glow of silver in her otherwise green eyes, marking her as a descendant of the Empyrean. She was also the one who had stabbed him.

  Behind her loomed an oppressively large man, who was broad-shouldered, broad-chested and broad-hipped, though he was decidedly top-heavy. His swarthy skin was veiled in brown cloths and leathers, with much of his face obscured beneath a collar, but his brow showed a crack that ran along his face much like one might find in fractured stone, and every now and then that crack pulsed with a faint amber light, the same light that glowed in his eyes. A Terramus.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Quite an auspicious pair of assailants. It may be that in this world newly occupied by the plane-touched that there is no such thing as chance. A world borne of a dream, born of a wish brought to reality... they emerged into the world from the realms below, but there was no exodus, no grand journey, no history. It as though they always were – a world conceived from nothing, born from some Greater Will that shaped eternity, infinity.

  For the humans this might come as a comfort, to know that they are not some random profusions of mist and stardust, but beings placed on this world to some greater purpose. For the plane-touched, the annihilation of chance becomes a curse, for the threads of fate bind them to each other, drawing them together for good or ill.

  No one knew that better than the Daoine, most ancient of all.

  And as Soren looked up at his assailants, his captors, he knew that he was indeed cursed.

  'Well,' said the woman. 'This turned out to be a rather auspicious night. Though for you, it has proven most unfortunate. Quite a sorry fate, to be bleeding out in an alleyway, so far from home, outlander.'

  From the beginning of time, all mortals have used the word Fate to justify the things that seem inevitable. Soren dreamed of naming the unnameable memories that echoed within his mind, that brought him to this moment, to be here before these people, these children of fate who now held his life and his future in their hands. As he thought back to his first memory in this incarnation, upon waking up in that tomb, he thought of the truths that remained hidden to him.

  The darkness that came before was part of that memory, a vast black silence that wrapped around him. Somewhere in that inveterate darkness there was a conception of strength, a perfect strength that had since eluded him, like the image of a dream vanishing from the consciousness.

  As he looked up at his assailants, he lamented his own lack of strength. His current predicament seemed like a betrayal of the countless things he must have endured, in the eternity before this awakening.

  His two assailants glared down at him. Then the woman sat on her haunches in front of him, her emerald eyes piercing.

  ‘Now, you’re going to tell me why you’ve followed us.’ she said, and she raised a free hand. A soft, silvery luminescence, as gentle as moonlight, began to emanate from the palm of her hand. Soren could feel divine energy beginning to form on her upraised hand. It was unformed, undirected. It could be used to heal or to wound.

  ‘If I like your answers, you might even get out of this alive.’

  ‘I wasn’t following you,’ said Soren. ‘There’s someone here in Dwinvale that I’m…’ he winced as the pain in his side blossomed as he shifted slightly. ‘That I’m looking for.’

  The Empyrean stared at Soren, her eyes narrowed.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘An assassin,’ said Soren. ‘They say she has shamanic powers. She certainly used abilities I couldn’t identify…’

  ‘And who is they?’

  Soren made a show of steadying his breathing. He needed to escape these two, but that was impossible while this Empyrean was this close.

  ‘She’s earned a fair share of notoriety,’ said Soren. ‘Caldershire, Grimvale, Drivorius… she’s wanted in a few towns, and merchants have placed a bounty on her head.’

  ‘And you’re looking to collect?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ Soren said.

  ‘Explain,’ she said, ‘and I would prefer not having to coax your motivations out of you.’

  Soren sighed. His wounds had healed, but he didn’t think he could take them both on at the moment. The Empyrean noted his reticence and she pursed her lips in thought.

  ‘This is not the first time you’ve run afoul of us,’ she said.

  As she spoke, Soren noted that her accent was oddly familiar. Her words were clipped, her voice a pleasant contralto. And her features, beyond the exotic nature of her plane-touched heritage, showed the angular bone structure of the northern climes. Here was one who was far from home. Soren frowned slightly. The northern climes were Brenindor. No one lived in those desolate wastelands, did they? Why then, did he make that association?

  ‘And how have I run afoul of you?’

  ‘A week ago,’ she said, ‘you accosted some of our runners.’

  I frowned. ‘Not possible,’ Soren replied. ‘I only arrived in Dwinvale two nights past.’

  She peered at him, eyes taking the measure of him. Judging his words, weighing the value of his life.

  ‘They were carrying something for the Master,’ she said, and she placed a peculiar emphasis on the title, one that Soren could not help but notice.

  ‘An item that has taken us very long to procure. The whole reason for coming to this forsaken town.’

  ‘What’s wrong with Dwinvale?’ Soren asked, curious.

  ‘There are curses upon the Dwermal Valley,’ she said, looking momentarily distracted. ‘On quiet nights, I can feel the earth coursing with ancient evil.’

  The Terramus grunted. ‘You’re the only one who can say something like that without sounding completely ridiculous.’

  ‘You feel it too, don’t you?’ she asked.

  ‘Of course I do. But that’s why we’re here, isn’t it?’

  ‘You’re here because of a curse?’ Soren inquired.

  The Terramus peered at him. With his massive frame and gleaming eyes, he was an intimidating figure.

  ‘I think you are too,’ he said, approaching the fallen Daoine. ‘In some form or fashion, we are all seeking Origination.’

  Soren didn’t reply. He was long past the point of thinking of these two as ordinary thugs or members of a street gang. The way they spoke, the way they acted... there was something more to them, that was clear. That they should bring up something as esoteric as Origination - the so-called birth of a new world within a world - told him that he had met a very strange pair indeed. Still, he knew better than to engage in a philosophical debate on the birth and death of worlds with strangers in a random alley. Particularly after one had stabbed him, and while he was bleeding out.

  Supposedly bleeding out, anyway. The wound wasn’t as bad as he made it out to be.

  ‘Honestly, Zephon,’ said the Empyrean. ‘Sometimes you just get carried away. Who knows what he thinks now?’

  ‘I wasn’t about to make any assumptions,’ Soren interjected.

  ‘Good,’ she said, turning her piercing gaze back upon him. 'Then you might just survive.’

  Daoine:  pronounced Dwahn, like the Spanish name Juan. Fey beings, resembling humans but with powers supposedly originating from hell.

  Empyrean: Beautiful, elf-like beings. Supposedly touched by divine powers.

  Ophiones: Humanoid people, with snake-like eyes and tongues. Mostly found in the ruins of the Fellvale

  Terramus:  Sturdy, powerful folk, with flesh like stone, and possessed of incredible strength.

  Origination: The birth and rebirth of the world. It is thought that the world can be rebuilt or remade, or otherwise altered and changed through some esoteric method, revolving around sorcery, or bargaining with higher powers, likely both. Many think of the concept as a myth. Some treat it as a philosophical idea, or an abstraction of academia. Others see it as a religious doctrine. It has several names - Genesis, Conceptualization, Excogitation and many others.